Would it make any difference to you if a fetus was a person?
Only somewhat. I am coming into this thread late and as such the response will be huge, and to every post I find interesting, as a result you will find my arguments unfolding over time. But to start this off with…
If a person, a fully adult person, were hooked against your will into your metabolism, would you not have the right to remove him? I am using rights based ethics here. Under a consistent rights based ethic, the initiator of force here violating someones rights is the fetus, unless you give consent.
Now, I am more of a utilitarian, but even then, the fetus does not matter. Compare the capacity for suffering an interest forming of a fetus, at any stage of development, and you will find them paling in comparison to the capacity of the mother. Under utilitarianism, one must seek to maximize utility, or good. In this case combination of maximizing the differential between pleasure and pain, and maximizing the number (and because they exist on a sliding scale with intelligence, magnitude) of held interests satisfied. A fetus cannot feel pain until very late in the pregnancy, and cannot hold meaningful interests until will after birth. If the mother does not want it in there, she is within her right to remove it.
Outside the womb is a different story because a baby can feel pain and hold rudimentary interests. As a result, killing it does not maximize utility with available options, if the mom doesn’t want it. Adoption does.
It's hard to draw the ethical line on abortion.
I.e. When can the Fetus be rendered "conscious"?
Before this moment, aborting the Fetus is arguably as moral as uprooting a plant.
Yet then there are other issues; A plant does not have the ability to Become a child.
A Fetus probably does.
Consciousness is irrelevant, because even if a late stage fetus has a primary consciousness, which it certainly does not until it can at least feel pain, very late in the pregnancy, it is still going to be a rudimentary one until well after birth, and one that is no more morally problematic while still in the womb, to crushing a well-developed lizard or chicken egg.
Potential is irrelevant.
This is because we can think of future people as having interests, and feeling pain, and an interest in living. But they wont have those interests until they are alive. If they are never alive, they have no moral standing.
To think otherwise would lead to problems as we would then be obligated to maximize the number of people on this planet, because the abstract future people have an interest in coming into existence… this clearly does not work.
from my knowledge, I believe that a Fetus is an individual Human body, is it not?
Human genetic code is irrelevant. We are not fundamentally different or special as compared to a lizard. The difference is one of magnitude of held interest and the capacity for suffering and pleasure, a matter of degree.
But a Fetus is an individual Human body, and in definition, a person is an individual Human body.
Not necessarily true. Would you refuse to ascribe personhood to an intelligent alien species or self-aware android intelligence?
Personhood is determined by the mind, and its capacity to think and feel, not based upon the genetic code possessed by a lump of unthinking cells parasitizing some woman’s uterus.
Furthermore, why is the killing of a conscious fetus, not as bad as that of a "person"?
knowing and perceiving; having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts.
Not all consciousnesses are created equal… they must develop for a while
I do get quite sick of Christians who so piously want to take everyone's choice away but who are not taking care of as many children as they possibly can and who vote against welfare, education, etc.
That is because they don’t care about kids at all. Their primary objective is the control of and subordination of women and the condemnation of sex.
It is argumentatively too late.
And it can damage the mother.
Giving birth actually carries a greater medical risk to the mother than the abortion does. No dice.
Abortion is an excuse for women to not have to face the music of the mistake they made when they had unprotected sex. It is an awful solution to an irresponsible decision that kills a living creature.
See what I mean about hating women and sex (I am still waiting on your responses in the homosexuality thread by the way)
What about rape? I suppose they ask for that? What about cases of women who are married/responsible, but have a birth control or condom failure and get pregnant as a result, and cannot afford, or know they are ill-suited to taking care of a screaming little monkey on acid?
More to the point, why should someone be punished for a min of 18.75 years for a mistake that lasted 2-13 minutes on average, that they are compelled to make by their evolutionary history and brain chemistry.
The simple fact is, this is not about the fetus at all for you. It is about the desire to subjugate other people and punish them for actions you subjectively disapprove of.
So what if the law is changed tomorrow to define a fetus as a person?
Let's talk on moral terms here Dave, not pedantry.
In the words of Silent Cal. You lose. At least to me. You run into a wall when talking to a relativist like DaveDave, but I am a functionalist…
We have what's called "partial-birth" abortion, which basically means the stupid cunt can't make up her mind in time and is essentially "having" the baby when she decides to abort it half way through labor.
Actually, no you misogynist dick. By all means, go swallow down your fundy bulls**t, but that is not how partial birth abortion works you miserable f**k. It is a late term abortion, but not midway through normal labor. What they do is induce labor, typically well before viability, and kill the large but undeveloped fetus. They do this in cases not where the “cunt cant make up her mind” but typically when the pregnancy is for whatever reason high risk and they don’t want to damage her uterus.
It is done to preserve her fertility. Less than 1% of abortions are partial birth, and almost all of them are for medical necessity
Not that you give a s**t about women, you would rather punish her for being damaged goods, for having the temerity to have a high risk pregnancy.
As long as the baby (and it IS a baby by this time, f**k sakes, she's popping the thing out dammit!) remains half way in the womb when it is killed it's still considered abortion. f**king sick.
It would be if you were not lying out your ass
Well, it's either alive or it isn't. That's my scientific evidence.
You don’t have a very good track record talking about science on this board.